It is also noteworthy that institutional valuation is nearly always the function of a special class. This is obviously the case with the institutions mentioned, and it is equally true, though perhaps less obviously, with pecuniary valuation. CHAPTER XXVI THE INSTITUTIONAL CHARACTER OF PECUNIARY VALUATION A PHASE OF SOCIAL PROCESS—PECUNIARY VALUES INSTITUTIONAL—INADEQUATE IDEA OF VALUATION IN ECONOMIC TREATISES—INTERACTION BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE MARKET—ECONOMIC VALUES AN OUTCOME OF ECONOMIC HISTORY—THE FACTOR OF CLASS—INFLUENCE OF UPPER-CLASS IDEALS—POWER OF THE BUSINESS CLASS OVER VALUES Pecuniary valuation is a phase of the general process of social thought, having its special methods and significance, but not peculiar in nature; the pecuniary estimates people set upon things are determined in a movement of suggestion and discussion, varying with the group and the time, like other phases of the public mind. This is apparent _a fortiori_ if we take what appear to be the simplest and most essential commodities. The estimation of wheaten bread as a necessity of life, that prevails with us, is a matter of opinion and custom; whether grounded in sound hygiene or not is irrelevant. Other countries and times have thought differently, and we know that foods may be regarded as necessary whose hygienic value is doubtful or negative, like beer in Germany or coffee with us. Consider in this connection the prepared foods known as cereals, for which vast sums are spent by all classes of our people; their vogue and value is clearly a matter of current, possibly transient, opinion, largely created by the psychological process of advertising. I need hardly go further into this. It is plain that even among the most necessitous an existing scale of pecuniary values can be explained only as a product of the same social forces which create other phases of tradition and sentiment; and no one will expect anything different in values prevailing among a richer class. I do not mean, of course, that these forces work wholly in the air, but that, whatever physiological or mechanical factors there may be in demand and supply, these become active only through the mediation of a psychological process.